"Write when drunk. Edit when sober. Marketing is the hangover."
- Ashwin Sanghi
I'm in a cash-flow crisis.
Desperation can drive people to desperate measures. Today, after dropping my granddaughter off at school, I ran a short "guerrilla marketing" experiment.
My Marketing Sign - Original Photo by @creatr
The crazy thing I did today.
I stood on the median of a parkway that goes through our town, waving a sign for passersby to read. For about an hour, I walked back and forth, up and down, waving the sign in the photo above.
Visible reactions varied.
Most people continued looking straight ahead, appearing to ignore me. Of course, it's difficult to see through most windshields and side windows, and so I can't really tell how many reacted this way.
Some folks responded to my smiling face and waving hands with smiles, and in a few cases waved back at me as well. As an alternative to waving, I would occasionally tip my hat at a passerby. Several police cars drove past me as well without stopping. For a while, I thought that all was well.
Then a police cruiser stopped.
Photo courtesy of Matt Popovich and http://unsplash.com
Then a police cruiser stopped.
The officer pulled up beside me in the left turn lane. I was all prepared to launch into a spiel about my right to free speech.
Rolling down his window, the cop said "There's a municipal code that prohibits you from doing this on the highway median. If you move to the sidewalk, you'll be fine."
He was quite pleasant about the whole thing. I appreciated his civility in warning, rather than ticketing, me. Thanking him, I moved to a sidewalk at one corner of the intersection. My "experimental hour" was almost up anyway.
When I stopped at Starbucks (before) and at Harbor Freight Tools (after) for a few minutes, I put the sign on the car windshield, holding it in place with the wiper blades. Hoping that a few more passers by might see and remember it.
Guerrilla marketing on a busy street...
Photo courtesy of Zach Inglis and http://unsplash.com
The sign is simple.
It says only "sidefire.com" and, for a color accent, has a blue icon in the corner intended to suggest the earth as seen from outer space. I am curious to find out whether some small percentage of the populace still has enough curiosity to remember and manually enter that short URL, "sidefire.com."
How did my experiment work?
It's too early to tell. I tried to get some feedback, believing that things were already set up in advance to give me the feedback I needed.
Going where the people are...
Photo courtesy of Steven Wei and http://unsplash.com
Then I made a frustrating discovery.
When I got home, I logged in to the control panel at my web hosting ISP... Internet Service Provider 1&1.com.
I tried following their instructions to bring up web statistics, only to discover to my shock and horror that they are not part of my web hosting service package!
Caveat Emptor!
When I heard that I would have to pay more to get statistics, I (calmly) informed the help desk person that I would immediately begin seeking an alternate service provider.
Fortunately, I work with a few different providers for different purposes, and so I changed up my "feedback mechanism" and I should have some idea tomorrow whether or not my stunt generated any web traffic.
Sad to say, I've been a customer at 1&1 for many years, beginning there because of modest costs. After learning today that they are among the vanishingly small 1% of ISPs that do not provide statistical information as a bare minimum service, it is clearly time to move on. Buyer beware!
There's one kind of feedback I need the most.
What I really want to see is a sale or two to reward my efforts. You know, like the stand-up comedian once said, "Thank you very much! No applause needed, just throw money." I know that the product I've created has already been a game-changer for a growing number of people. If you are interested, I can arrange to accept $SBD$ as well - please just ask.
FIN
You are why I'm here on Steemit!
I have very eclectic interests and hope, over time, to write about them all.
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